Awakin.org

Waking up to Wisdom
In Stillness and Community

Suresh Subramanian

Sometimes a brochure can change your life. Just ask Suresh. Three years back, he picked up a pamphlet on AIDS orphans and he couldn't sleep that night!

42 million people are living with HIV/AIDS today. That's 42,000,000. "I couldn't believe that this was existing in my lifetime," Suresh Subramanian remembers. After a coincidental meeting with a family friend from Nariobi, Suresh found himself in Africa the next week. His life hasn't been the same since.

The serendipity of picking up the brochure is even more stunning considering that Suresh had "jumped ship" the week before. He had been in corporate America for 15 years, and till 1999, as a Vice President at Gateway Computers. Then one day, he walked out of a meeting and said to himself, "I'm done here." Then, all of a sudden, "serendipity took over" and he started Power of Love.

On March 12th, we will have the pleasure of hearing Suresh's journey through his personal inspirations that moved him to action, lay out the story of the AIDS epidemic, the social, economic, and cultural accelerators of the epidemic, the lessons learned from 20 years of the fight, and the stories of the courageous grassroots responses. The event is hosted in our home and there is no cost to attend -- please RSVP to attend.

The AIDS Epidemic

The statistics are unending. Hitler demolished 6 million Jews in World War II, in one of the greatest tragedies of mankind. By comparision, 70 million people are expected to die in the next two decades because of AIDS, leaving behind 50 million orphans!

Just in Zambia, there are 14 million orphans. Being himself a father of three, Suresh connected with the kids -- "These are my children too!" Most of these orphans only get to eat one meal a day, during the dire poverty. So Suresh, in San Diego, tried living on one meal a day. Didn't work. He realized he needed to do more.

"With the global AIDS crisis, we are facing the single biggest catastrophe in human history. There has never been anything like this. Two decades into it, the epidemic is still in unchecked growth. Yet it is a problem with a solution, if we act with compassion and determination. Now." 

Suresh Subramanian has traveled, lived in and worked with grassroots organizations in Africa and India that are making a difference and winning the war against this epidemic. These courageous village and community-based efforts are often doing what millions of dollars and global organizations have not been able to do - reducing rates of infection, providing care for the infected and a community-based solution to the problem of orphans.  

Since Nov 2000, Suresh has been working in the area of HIV/AIDS in Africa and India to help fund grassroots organizations in Kenya, Zambia, and more recently India, to build community-based models to fight the epidemic and support the orphans. Outside of that, Suresh works at the Waitt Foundation for identifying "creative uses of technology", serves on the board of a nonprofit in Kenya and was recently nominated to be on the board of the Global AIDS alliance in Washington D.C.

Please RSVP above if you'd like to attend, share inspiration and join in a space of service.

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